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Abstractions blog

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simulated image of two celestial bodies interacting
astrophysics

What Lights the Universe’s Standard Candles?

By Lyndie Chiou
February 8, 2023
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Type Ia supernovas are astronomers’ best tools for measuring cosmic distances. In a first, researchers have managed to re-create one on a supercomputer, giving a boost to a leading hypothesis for how they form.

a worm superimposed with lines and nodes representing neural networks
neural networks

Researchers Discover a More Flexible Approach to Machine Learning

By Steve Nadis
February 7, 2023
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“Liquid” neural nets, based on a worm’s nervous system, can transform their underlying algorithms on the fly, giving them unprecedented speed and adaptability.

Illustration in which a bright red line results from many wavelike ripples overlapping.
explainers

How Our Reality May Be a Sum of All Possible Realities

By Charlie Wood
February 6, 2023
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Richard Feynman’s path integral is both a powerful prediction machine and a philosophy about how the world is. But physicists are still struggling to figure out how to use it, and what it means.

topology

Mathematicians Eliminate Long-Standing Threat to Knot Conjecture

By Leila Sloman
February 2, 2023
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A new proof shows that a knot some thought would contradict the famed slice-ribbon conjecture doesn’t.

Video/image of a metronome whose arm is simultaneously ticking rightward and leftward.
quantum physics

How Quantum Physicists ‘Flipped Time’ (and How They Didn’t)

By Charlie Wood
January 27, 2023
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Two teams have made photons act as if time were simultaneously flowing in two directions. The experiments demonstrate a way to potentially boost the performance of quantum devices.

illustration of four six-sided green dice covered in different numbers, with orange arrows connecting some of the dice
combinatorics

Mathematicians Roll Dice and Get Rock-Paper-Scissors

By Erica Klarreich
January 19, 2023
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Mathematicians have uncovered a surprising wealth of rock-paper-scissors-like patterns in randomly chosen dice.

Illustration of a mother holding an infant, with strands of DNA running between the bacteria inside them.
microbiome

Mobile Genes From the Mother Shape the Baby’s Microbiome

By Yasemin Saplakoglu
January 17, 2023
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Tiny genetic sequences in a mother’s bacteria seem to hop into the infant’s bacteria, perhaps ensuring a healthy microbiome later in life.

Purple illustration of round qubits pointing to rows of blocks that progressively become more chaotic.
quantum computing

New Algorithm Closes Quantum Supremacy Window

By Ben Brubaker
January 9, 2023
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Random circuit sampling, a popular technique for showing the power of quantum computers, doesn’t scale up if errors go unchecked.

Illustration of asteroids in space that are interconnected into a structure like that of the amino acid glycine.
explainers

Inside Ancient Asteroids, Gamma Rays Made Building Blocks of Life

By John Rennie +1 authors
Allison Parshall
January 4, 2023
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A new radiation-based mechanism adds to the ways that amino acids could have been made in space and brought to the young Earth.


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